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Marriage
Poetry
The Baby Is Clapping
Drunk on red wine and pea soup, my first husband and I will grab our wool hats, pull them over each other’s ears, and pretend we are happy Quebecois sailors home from playacting for the baby.
October 2011Fiction
His Mrs. K
She sits in the kitchen with coffee and a view of the soft rain. This is her early-morning time alone and always the best part of the day, before he awakens and she must adjust to his moods, his needs. This, her hour of resolve — not to do anything in particular, but only to bear on through the morning.
July 2011
Fiction
Accident
They dragged him from the car (still screaming, he was later told), but they had to wait for the Jaws of Life for Anabelle, and he kept hearing that — the Jaws of Life, the Jaws of Life — and it didn’t really register what they were talking about; it was that device you see on the news that they use to pry people out of cars, and it usually means death, not life.
July 2011
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Dear Sugar
There are some things you can’t understand yet. Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding. It’s good that you’ve worked hard to resolve childhood issues while in your twenties, but understand that these issues will need to be resolved again. And again. Some things can be known only with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of them have to do with forgiveness.
June 2011Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
You Are Not Pretty
On the drive back to the dorm I think more about her comment. Pretty. Even the word sounds delicate, the tongue fluttering against the roof of the mouth like a trapped butterfly when it’s spoken. Alone in my room I take a look at myself in the mirror. I could almost be pretty — I am tall and long limbed, with blond hair and blue eyes — but I’m not.
June 2011
Sy Safransky’s Notebook
April 2011
Sure I work hard. So do many other people. I try to remember something my friend Robert once said: “All those doctors who complain that they worked so hard in medical school — compared to who? Someone who digs ditches all day? Someone who works two shifts at McDonald’s?”
April 2011Sy Safransky’s Notebook
January 2011
I haven’t written in more than a week. Forgive me, O Muse, for being absent without leave. Maybe it’s the Prozac. Maybe it’s the rain. Maybe it’s because I’m too damn vain. Can’t I put down simple words and send them out the door?
January 2011Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Oar: A Summer In Three Acts
I had anchored my boat on an inside bend of the snowmelt-fed Rock Creek. Whoever christened that body of water a “creek” had clearly never attempted to cross it in June, when the burly current threatens to unfoot the knee-deep wader.
December 2010
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Best Part
At my former father-in-law’s funeral in November, I walked up to my ex-husband Billy and kissed him. It was our fifth kiss in thirty years: one when we finalized our divorce, one at his mother’s funeral, one at our son’s wedding, one at the birth of our twin grandchildren four months before, and now this kiss, with its hint of grief. I still loved his parents. And I had loved him once.
October 2010
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